For years, restaurant kitchens have been the target of health inspectors, but now the Los Angeles Health Department is targeting your kitchen. They have designed an
online food safety test, just like the one used to rate restaurant kitchens. But this time you can test your own kitchen.
We recently put three Los Angeles area kitchens to the test.
L.A. Health Inspector Hector De La Cruz came along as we raided refrigerators and poked through people's cabinets. We took samples along the way of lots of stuff: homemade chicken barley soup, dish towels, sponges, rare steak, even a fly swatter one guy hung with his clean pots and pans (yuck!).
A lab in New Jersey put our samples under the microscope and you won't believe what showed up. One pot of mom's homemade soup had 50 times more bacteria than is expected in prepared foods. Working this story made me want to go home and scrub my kitchen from top to bottom.
When was the last time you looked closely at what may be lurking in your kitchen? And what do you think a real health inspection may turn up??
